And so you're correct - politics and technology is intertwined, but HN is happy to suppress conversation that would arguably lead to discussing technological solutions.
The biggest problem is our information distribution/propagation (and therefore trust) apparatus is corrupted, which does include the issue with low-to-no-effort downvotes allowing a person to suppress content while getting rewarded via a dopamine hit.
Puts a lot of pressure on one or two hacker news mods to be the purveyors of neutrality for the entire media landscape if that's what's expected.